Pro-Poor Tourism: Principles, Methodologies and ... - Harold Goodwin

Pro-Poor Tourism: Principles, Methodologies and Mainstreaming[14] To turn now to the second element of my brief: methodologies. There is not time totalk in detail about particular cases, reflecting on research and consultancy I have tried topull together some of the key elements necessary to realise the benefits of tourism foreconomically poor people – this generally means creating employment for them oropportunities to sell things which they can produce, or control access to, to tourists and/orhotels and tour operators.[15] The realisation of benefits generally depends on the creation of employmentopportunities for poor people and the development of economic linkages which benefitthe local economy – if a new resort or hotel attracts in migrant labour and imports itsfood and soft furnishings from outside of the local economy this is not benefiting thelocal community.[16] There are some key principles, avoid creating dependency on tourism, develop formsof tourism which can benefit the economically poor and involve local communities indecision making, engage them in discussions about how they think they can engage withtourism and to what extent they want to do so, for example, through the sale of crafts orfood produce; or by providing local guiding or boat services. We must recognise thattourism is only one opportunity for development – it is not always appropriate, we mustengage in debate about whether or not it is a viable strategy for particular communities.Not every community wants tourism and before encouraging any community to engage intourism you need to be sure about the market and their ability to sell tourism goods andservices – there need to be tourists and travellers wanting to buy,. It is not tourism until itis sold. .[17] Krishna Ghimire 8 has drawn attention to the importance of the domestic tourismmarket in developing countries, recently in South Africa it has been recognised thatdomestic tourism amounts in expenditure to nearly as much as domestic tourism – indeveloped and developing countries tourism generally causes money generated in8 Ghimire K B (2001) The Native Tourist EarthscanDr Harold Goodwin Universiti Teknologi Malaysia May 2005 6